The End...

So after arriving in Beijing we flew down to Hong Kong, spent another night there before connecting on to Delhi the following for our final few days before we made our way back to reality.

18 months, 23 countries, 40 flights, 6989 uncomfortable bus journeys, innumerate good times & a lifetimes worth of experiences & memories later, we head home looking forward to seeing our family and friends again and catching up on a bit of what you have all been up to while we have been busy writing this!

Thank you to everyone that has been reading, you can rest easy in the knowledge now that this is the last posting... for now at least!

8 Days in Tibet

So after finally getting all our necessary visas and permits required for the guided tour through Tibet (the somewhat paranoid Chinese government not allowing independent travel through Tibet) we set off with 11 other travellers, our guide, Lampar and our driver, up through the beautiful Kathmandu valley in Nepal, headed north for the border town with Tibet. In the middle of beautifully lush green mountains with hundreds of waterfalls tumbling over the cliffs into the river below, we were met with a horribly soulless white tiled building surrounded by stern looking young men all dressed up for a day out of playing soldiers and officials. ‘We must be at the Chinese border’ we said to ourselves.

This really was Chinese paranoia at its finest, as they one by one unpacked the entirety of everyone’s luggage to make sure no one was bringing in any subversive materials that would corrupt the minds of the completely un-corrupted massively oppressed Tibetan people, such as that literary work of Satan – The Lonely Planet (...it is written by Salman Rushdie isn’t it?!?), not to mention anything that looked at all religious in any way shape or form. Weapons, contraband or drugs however could’ve slipped through quite easily apparently.

After repacking all our luggage we were finally admitted back into The People’s Republic of China or Tibet, as most of who come from the free world like to refer to it, confident in the knowledge that the LYF’s hadn’t thought of checking our laptop, where we had The Satanic Verses, erm I mean, The Lonely Planet, in PDF version. Feeling quite smug as we slipped another one past the Chinese officials we headed into the border office toilets. Doubtful there has ever been a quicker change of emotions, from feeling smug to feeling sick in no time at all, as we were greeted by a typically disgusting Chinese toilet. We did think that they might have made a bit more of an effort at their ‘official’ border, but apparently not. With cubicle doors wide open, the Chinese officials that were in there at the time proceeded to deposit their lunch into the trough beneath them. Without even a wipe, flush or wash of their dirty little hands the young men all dressed up for their big game of soldiers then left the toilets and proceeded to walk back into the customs area and handle their way through everyone’s previously clean(ish) possessions...... ‘Oh China our old friend, how we have missed you’ – we thought to ourselves as we gagged and wretched our way back out the toilet block.

So we are assuming that you know that China forcefully occupied Tibet in 1950 (or ‘peacefully liberated Tibet’ as the Beijing propaganda refers to it as) and over the last 60 years have led a campaign of brutality against the Tibetan people, forcing out their political and spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in fear of his life back in 1959 and continued to destroy the majority of their cultural heritage and persecute the local people until they give in to the Chinese way and frankly just start behaving themselves and acting like the rest of the Chinese population and do as they are told. So it was with quite some mixed emotions that we even decided to go into Tibet at all, particularly after spending the majority of the previous 2 months around areas in India and Nepal populated largely by Tibetan refugees.

However we decided to go and see it for ourselves, intending to hand over our tourist cash to Tibetan run business’ rather than Chinese as much as possible...easier said than done as we were about to find out.

The first thing you notice once on the Tibetan side of the border is the significant improvement in the quality of the road versus the Nepal side. A fully surfaced smooth mountain road, complete with crash barriers on every corner (very novel!) and steel netting set up to catch the rocks that would otherwise tumble down onto the road. Two very distinct lanes were marked out with a dividing line down the middle and everything. Some people just take all the fun out of everything!

In all seriousness the ‘Friendship Highway’ as the road cutting all the way across Tibet that was built by the Chinese is somewhat ironically named, is from our experience hands down the best quality and safest road anywhere in the Himalayas. Give yourselves a pat on the back the ladies and gentlemen of the Chinese government. Oh, that’s right – you’ve already done that numerous time haven’t you.

Anyway, after a few hours driving through beautiful scenery we steadily climbed our way up to 3700 metres and the town of Nyalam where we would spend our first night. We were a very diverse bunch of nationalities in our group, 1 Dutch, 2 Hungarian’s, 2 Germans, 2 French, 1 Japanese, 1 Czech, 1 Ukrainian and 1 Afghan/Canadian, and the first night we would spend sharing a dormitory room – which with the exception of a little snoring coming from the Czech corner, worked out really well. After sharing a few Lhasa beers and a Yak burger with some of our new companions we decided that they all seemed like a very nice bunch and would enjoy spending the next week or so in their company. Perhaps with the exception of our Ukrainian friend who refused to shower or change his clothes the entire time even though he was carrying the largest bag out of all of us. ‘Must be all those weapons and contraband he has smuggled through’ we thought to ourselves...

Day 2 started out bright and early as we continued our climb up onto the Tibetan plateau , otherwise known as ‘The Roof of The World’. Our guide informed us that today we would be crossing 3 high passes, the first at 5100 metres, the second at 4900 metres and the third one at 5200 metres. The strange thing about the landscape of the plateau is that because everything is so high, you barely even notice you are gaining any altitude or arriving at a high pass. The ground to the left and right of you for the majority of the time is all at the same level as the road with mountain peaks in the distance rising up another 3000 metres or so above you as you head ever closer to the 8,842 metre peak of Mt Everest. A barrier of prayer flags across the road would generally be the only indication that we had arrived at one of these high passes – a little different to the high passes we travelled across in northern India.

Meeting various nomads along the way generally selling prayer flags or a few trinkets, one chap invited us into his tent that he lived in up there at 5100 metres while he plied his trade selling prayer flags and herding Yak. His tent was surprisingly cosy complete with a burner stove for heat and cooking – he offered us some of his Yak cheese he had farmed and gave us a little musical demonstration on his drum and cymbal. Does this chap need ‘peacefully liberating’ we pondered...

Later in the afternoon we stopped by the turn off to Mount Everest base camp & were fortunate enough to catch a view of the peak of Everest poking out above the top of distant clouds. Photo taken, box ticked, we jumped back on the bus & chugged along for another few hours.

After about 10 hours driving through wonderfully desolate landscapes we arrived in the town/city of Shigatse, the 2nd largest in Tibet, after the capital Lhasa. Checking into a typically low budget Chinese hotel (i.e. rock solid beds, not a vacuum cleaner in sight and CCTV – the Chinese national TV channel that spouts nothing but incredibly good news about Chinese achievements 24-7 , which just so happens to share the acronym with something that represents paranoia and state monitoring of individual actions - in Britain at least anyway), though actually was significantly better than the standard of accommodation we had been led to believe we might end up in by our tour agent that we booked it through in Kathmandu.

In Tibetan Buddhism the second in command after the Dalai Lama is a chap called the Panchen Lama. As with all the leaders of this religion, the individuals that represent the various Lamas’ are re-incarnations of an ancient god, so after each Lama dies the search begins for the re-incarnation of the Lama again, so when the 10th Panchen Lama died in 1989, the search began for his re-incarnation. The Dalai Lama identified a young Tibetan boy of 6 years old as the latest incarnation, the 11th Panchen Lama. Quickly afterwards the Chinese government whisked this boy away to a secret prison in Beijing somewhere, making him the youngest political prisoner in the world. That was about 14-15 years ago, and the Dalai Lama and hundreds of thousands of others have campaigned for the boys’ release, but to no avail.

To try and quiet the calls for the release of the 11th Panchen Lama, the Chinese government have introduced a distinctly Chinese looking young man of the same age that they now claim is the 11th Panchen Lama, obviously fully trained in the methods and practices that the Chinese government are comfortable with him preaching, rather than the ‘dangerous and subversive’ teachings that may have come from the mouth of the actual Tibetan boy.

The monastery that we visited in Shigatse is the official seat/residence of the Panchen Lama so it has been a somewhat controversial place for many years. As a tourist in Tibet you can only go to the few places that the authorities allow, this monastery, Tashilompu Monastery is now one of those places – in an attempt by the Chinese government to prove that they have nothing to hide apparently. The ‘approved’ 11th Panchen Lama even made a recent visit to the monastery amongst much hype and fanfare from the officials. It is still a very sensitive monastery, and our Tibetan guide made a point of telling us that we could ask him anything we liked about religion while in there, but not mention anything about politics or the controversy over the Panchen Lama or the current 14th Dalai Lama of which no pictures or discussion/mention is permitted anywhere in Tibet. It is believed that many of the ‘monks’ in this monastery are actually Chinese informants, listening out for ‘subversive’ conversations, reporting the Tibetans involved in the discussions so they can be suitably dealt with. This was also highlighted later to us when our guide informed us that the staff wearing orange ‘maintenance’ uniforms were also military personnel.

After the visit to the monastery we decided to follow the pilgrim circuit or ‘Kora’ as it is known, around the outskirts of the monastery & up the side of the surrounding mountain. The entire circuit is lined with prayer wheels all the way along that the pilgrims rotate clockwise on their way round, stopping every so often to prostrate – a prayer movement that involves laying face down on the ground and spreading your arms out to the side and pulling them together above your head.

We followed the Kora trail around the hillside towards the recently rebuilt fort that looms large over the city, looking very much like a mini Potola Palace in Lhasa. Visitors are not permitted entrance here and it apparently lies completely empty and dormant, merely standing as a landmark these days. Down past the fort we stumbled into the old Tibetan quarter of the city where the local market was underway, where rows of women sat around drinking tea & playing cards next to a neatly lined up collection of what looked like goats, all perfectly in a seated possession, skinned with the exception of some fur still around their ankles & their heads chopped off. Needless to say we ate vegetarian that evening.

Moving further across the country the following day, we moved on to the town of Gyantse, a town where the Brits massacred 700 Tibetans in 4 minutes flat apparently back in 1904. So it turns out that once again the English are not exactly whiter than white when it comes to crimes against humanity in the region. Apparently during the British rule of India, the British Raj caught wind of a rumour that the Russians were planning to attack India and overthrow the Brits, so in preparation to add an extra line of defence in the form of a buffer state, the then military general, General Young-Husband advanced on Tibet aiming to claim the territory. Turning up in Gyantse with guns and fire power, the locals took a very quick and serious beating when they tried to defend themselves with just sticks, stones and the belief that Buddha would act as their protector. He didn’t as it turned out.

By all accounts the Tibetans couldn’t quite make out what was going on, as immediately after killing and maiming hundreds of Tibetans our next move was to set up a medical camp and try to treat & help the wounded. The Brits apparently then marched onto the capital city of Lhasa, killed a few hundred more defenceless Tibetans before General Young-Husband had some sort of spiritual awakening upon seeing the Potala Palace & decided to retreat immediately. Never to be the same man again, denouncing the army & becoming a devout Buddhist.

Thankfully for us the Tibetans appeared to hold no grudge against the Brits and were nothing but warm and friendly towards us. Young-Husband and his crew had also completely destroyed the town’s attractive hill top fort, that the locals diligently rebuilt, only to have it completely destroyed again by the Chinese during the cultural revolution of the late ‘50’s. It was re-built again in the ‘90’s and now offers superb views over the town and the whole valley – which considering the valley floor is around 4000 metres above sea level is surprisingly fertile & green this time of year, full of crops of barley & rape seed.

Another full day on the road followed, crossing a few more 5000 odd metre passes, stopping off at a glacier, having a photo shoot with some local yak herdsmen, having lunch in a traditional Tibetan front room/restaurant and stopping off at Tibet’s most sacred lake – Yamdrok Lake.

Yamdrok lake has become the centre of yet more Chinese fuelled controversy over the last few years as the Chinese government have installed a hydro electric plant into the lake, which involves the water in the lake being drained down into a power plant at a lower altitude further down the valley. The lake has no rivers that feed it & with very little rainfall coming to this area it is essentially a dead body of water that will not naturally replenish itself. It is a massive affront to the Tibetan people who hold this lake sacred to see the water levels significantly reducing year on year in the name of electricity. Whether the electricity generated actually remains in Tibet or not we don’t know.

As we approached the outskirts of Lhasa it felt like we could be rolling into any other modern Chinese city. It is a massive sprawling place full of typically Chinese white tiled buildings and high rise apartment blocks being built left right & centre. It is in a beautiful natural setting though, with a huge river skirting around it and towering mountains hemming it in, which help detract from the rampaging modernity.

The pre-1950 Tibetan area of the city is now a small little quarter, though infinitely more full of character & atmosphere than the rest of the city areas combined. Our hotel was right in the heart of this area, just off the main Bharkor Square with the Potola Palace looming over from a nearby hillside.

During the few days we spent in Lhasa we visited several of the key monasteries that are still in existence, the hugely important & incredibly crowded Jokhang Temple – considered one of the most important temples in Tibetan Buddhism and naturally spent an afternoon exploring the grand and enormous Potola Palace, one of the world’s great landmarks, which now stands with a Chinese flag flying proudly from its roof as it now looks over the newly constructed ‘Liberation Plaza & Monument’ that this areas current landlords installed. The Potola Palace is/was the Dalai Lama’s winter residence with all past Dalai Lamas being buried there in huge gold guilded stupas inside, though obviously since 1959 the current Dalai Lama has not spent any time at all what with being in exile and all. I wonder what he now thinks of his old residence with these new decorative amendments to the roof and the surrounding area.

Lhasa is now a city of some several hundred thousand inhabitants, Han Chinese from mainland China now out numbering the Tibetans by more than 2:1. The completion of the Beijing to Lhasa railway in 2006 has significantly added to the numbers of Chinese moving into the area to set up business’. The Chinese are naturally an industrious nation with strong business skills and have introduced almost every product a chinese or western tourist could ever want. There are some job opportunities being created for Tibetans as a result of this, so it certainly has a positive side. The reality seems to be much more that all these Chinese run business’ are actually marginalising the Tibetans even more and making it harder for them with their inferior commercial skills to make a viable business.

So after a very interesting 8 days in Tibet, experiencing beautiful landscapes & witnessing a culture that is being changed so rapidly we courted controversy ourselves and boarded the 48 hour train from Lhasa to Beijing.

The train itself was ultra modern and comfortable, with a nice dining carriage and comfortable beds. It was just the toilets that left a bit to be desired, but that was to be expected really. It is the highest train line in the world, rising up to over 5100 metres at points and spends much of the first 24hrs above 4500 metres, passing through seemingly endless expanses of uninhabited wilderness. The 48 hours actually passed remarkably quickly meeting some interesting travel companions along the way such as Howard, a 70 year old American mathematics professor who was spending a couple of months travelling around Asia on his own. We also met several well educated young Chinese professionals who were good fun and offered up some good insights on the current way of life in the rapidly developing China... EG

Question: Do people within China know that their media accessibility is incredibly censored and full of propaganda, and if so how do they feel about that?

Answer: The majority of the country don’t realise this is the case and for those that do, many of them really don’t care to rock the boat provided they are getting their slice of the amount of new wealth that is being generated, but also added that we know what can happen to us if we do speak out to openly (they were also speaking in hushed tones in case the train staff or other chinese hear them).

Maybe a spot of 'peaceful liberation' would help things along...

Nepal

Crossing the border from India into Nepal at the town of Sunauli, we spent one night in a nice enough little place called The Old Cottage – it wasn’t a particularly old place and it sure as hell wasn’t a cottage, so we’re not quite sure where the name came from but the blokes that ran it were very helpful and friendly. The following morning we set out on our bus journey north east through Nepal up to the capital city of Kathmandu.

Nepal obviously being a country with one or two mountains, it came as no surprise to find our journey would be a fairly slow going 9 hour journey across mountain roads. Thankfully, the road was a considerably more civilised mountain road than anything had been in India with the majority of the way actually a tarmac road. We never really went over about 1600 metres altitude so the scenery was lush and green all the way with plenty of rickety quaint little villages scattered along the hillsides – very picturesque.

Our original plan for coming through Nepal was to do some trekking, hopefully the 18-21 day Annapurna circuit. Though we had made a bit of a cock up with the time of year we arrived here as it was now monsoon season, meaning it was really hot, humid, wet and a lot of low lying cloud obscuring the views. So we decided to change our plans a little, now only intending to spend 2 weeks in Nepal just to get an initial feel for the place and then head off into neighbouring Tibet.

So after the obligatory first night in a new city staying in a dump, we moved ourselves round to a really nice place called ‘Hotel Ganesh Himal’, just round the corner from the main Kathmandu tourist district of Thamel. A comfortable hotel with a nice garden area to relax in was a welcome change, particularly after visiting Varanasi in India - the filthiest place known to man, and picking up a somewhat inevitable virus. Thamel is a major tourist haunt, equal to the likes of Koh San Road in Bangkok, every building is either a restaurant, bar, souvenir shop, travel agency or hotel, and even considering we were here out of season western tourists were all over the place.

Whilst Paul spent the next few days recovering from whatever virus he had picked up in Varanasi, I took to the streets and looked up the local attractions in and around Kathmandu. Starting in the old town, which is dominated by Durbar (Palace) Square, which was built around the 17th century although many of the buildings around the square date back much further - one of the key reasons why Kathmandu is known as a living museum.

The area comprises a number of individual small squares and temples, which historically was where the Kings lived and were crowned. No royalty now remains, though instead they have a real life goddess known as ‘Kumari’ that lives in one of the buildings called the Kumari Bahal. A girl of between 4 years old and puberty is chosen to be a Kumari after passing many tests: she must have 32 strict physical characteristics; she must be from a family of gold or silversmiths; she must not be scared when put in a dark room with men dressed up as demons shouting noises and wearing gruesome masks and she must be able to select personal belongings as her own from prior Kumari’s which if she were the reincarnation of Durga, she would recognise as her own. The reign ends when she has her first period but her family collect a sizable dowry for all her hard work.

There used to be a number of smaller towns surrounding Kathmandu but now the city has grown so much it encompasses them all. Just 20 minutes walk from Durbar Square is Swayambhunath Stupa, which literally means ‘ self arisen’ and is derived from a time when the Kathmandu valley was once under a lake & it is said that the Stupa arose from the water. Thought to date back to the 5th century, the complex comprises a number of small temples and a museum, though is dominated by the huge white Stupa with a gold gilded spire & the eyes of Buddha staring out over the valley. Around the Stupa are prayer wheels and as with every Buddhist temple, pilgrims or devotees will turn each of the wheels (all containing the mantra ‘om mani padme hum’ which means something like ‘hail to the jewel in the lotus’), whilst walking around in a clockwise direction. This mantra is present in every prayer wheel in every Buddhist Monastery or hand held prayer wheel and by spinning the wheel you are in effect saying the mantra over and over. Swayambhunath is apparently a great place to visit for views over the whole valley which if it had not been drizzling and overcast, it may have been!

Once Paul was feeling a little better, we headed over to one of the most important cultural sites around Kathmandu; Bodhnath, dating back to the 6th century albeit the Stupa was rebuilt during the 14th century. Tibetan Buddhism is practised here and all around the great white Stupa are lanes with small businesses producing all manner of paraphernalia required for Buddhist life; butter lamps, singing bowls, drums, robes as well as many tourist trinket shops. Many of the Tibetan refugees have fled to Nepal as well as Northern areas of India since 1959, after the Chinese invasion of Tibet.

We then set the wheels in motion to get through all the necessary red tape to make our trip into Tibet happen. With no independent travel being permitted in Tibet we had to rely on a tour agency to plan & book everything for us – all for the princely sum of roughly double the price of what we could’ve booked it for ourselves had we been allowed to do so...

While we waited for it all to be organised we decide to head to Pokhara and spend the week there instead of Kathmandu. 10 hours on the bus later of travelling through beautiful lush green mountain scenery we arrive at the lovely little lakeside town of Pokhara, another popular tourist destination used predominantly as a gateway town for people starting treks out into the mountains. In 40+ degrees & with daily monsoon rains we weren’t up for any of that, opting instead to hire a little moto-scooter for a few days to explore the countryside with considerably less physical exertion.

Our most active day in Pokhara involved being rowed across the lake & then hiking up the hill to the Japanese Peace Pagoda. Lots of sweating and plenty of good views later we made our way down through the forest, past the paddy fields & back into town for another lakeside meal.

After the heaviest day of rain yet from this year’s monsoon, we got back on the bus & returned to Kathmandu. Our journey was delayed several hours while we waited for the mountain roads to be cleared in several places where they had been blocked by landslides, triggered as a result of the heavy rains (28cms in about 15 hours).

We spent another couple of days getting all the finalities sorted with our various visa & permits we need for Tibet, mainland China & re-entry into India before hooking up with the rest of our tour group & headed north through Nepal up to the Tibetan/Chinese border.

It was really disappointing that we got the season wrong with Nepal, we had really been looking forward to this section of the trip and the trekking options we had hoped to do. Having said that, it was a good initial taste of the country and has confirmed to us that it’s definitely worth returning in the future to have another go - when the weather is a little more favourable of course!

India - 'Holy Sh*t'..... Varanasi

Well if Jodhpur is supposedly the rubbish dump of Rajasthan, then Varanasi must rank as the rubbish dump of the entire country - it is one seriously filthy place. It is also probably the busiest and most chaotic place in India as well. There are some beautiful old colonial buildings still hanging on in the middle of the old town and walking through the narrow lanes full of shops and tea stalls one can imagine what it used to be like, once-upon-a-time, but most are in a state of disrepair, dogs, monkeys, cows and water buffalo are around every corner and dodging the ‘mess’ from these is a full time exercise. Many people sleep and live in amongst all of this mess and chaos, not in homes but on the street and it does make you realise how very lucky we are at home.

Varanasi is one of the most important places to Hindus, or more pertinently the River Ganges that flows through the city - considered the holiest of all rivers to Hindus, supposedly possessing spiritual and life giving powers hence millions of Indians flock here on pilgrimage every year to bathe in the Ganges and drink from it for its supposed benefits. The reality about the river is that it is horrendously polluted, being the repository of all of Varanasi's multiple unfiltered sewage outputs which just pump straight into it. A fair bit of the cities litter (of which there is a lot) also ends up in the river, as do the carcass' of dead dogs and cows, and then of course to add to that wonderful cocktail of foulness you also need to add human remains into the mix as well.

Being cremated on the banks of the Ganges and having your ashes scattered into the river is the highest honour that can be bestowed on a Hindu, the theory being the holy river offers liberation from the perpetual cycle of death and re-birth. All day every day, there are public open air cremation ceremonies that take place at one of the 'burning ghats' as they are known - a ghat being an place along the river bank with a series of steps leading down to the water’s edge. The streets of Varanasi are a labyrinth of narrow winding alleys overrun with people and animals, a regular sight as you jostle your way through the maze is a group of men carrying a handmade bamboo stretcher with the body of their deceased family member on it, wrapped in cloth and elaborately decorated in bright sari type material and flowers.

The bodies are walked down to the river before they doused in the holy waters of the Ganges, then carefully stacked up within a pile of logs that sit within one of the many shallow pits that are dug into the river bank, more logs are then placed on top of the body finishing off the construction of the funeral pyre. Some ritualistic ceremonies then follow before the funeral pyre is set alight and certain select family members, along with numerous members of the general public stand around and watch the cremation take place. It obviously doesn't take long for the robes to burn off the body and for raw burning flesh to be on display. The ashes are then collected up and scattered into the river, along with any stray limbs etc that didn't quite get fully cremated. Literally right next to all this happening you have people doing their laundry in the exact same stretch of river while people merrily swim and splash about, drinking in all that goodness right in amongst it all. To those carrying out any of these rituals it is the most natural and normal thing in the world - to your average westerner on the other hand it can seem to be some darkly sadistic game of Russian roulette. (photo above right is courtesy of the National Geographic.... we didn't think it appropriate to take pictures).

A study by an environmental group has published a report stating that for water to be safe for human bathing it should contain less than 500 faecal coliform bacteria (human waste) per litre of water; a sample taken from this stretch of the Ganges apparently had in excess of 1.5 million faecal coliform bacteria per litre. Life giving properties eh...

We arrived in Varanasi a week or two before the monsoon was due to hit the area, meaning it was stiflingly hot and humid (46-48c) which when added to the mix of the filth everywhere and the human bbq's that were going on it gave the place a somewhat funky whiff to say the least.

Every morning at about 5.30am and every evening at about 7pm the 'Puja' (respect) ceremony is carried out in honour of the Ganges, or 'Mother Ganga' as it is known to the Hindu's. The particular ghats where these take place are absolutely mobbed with pilgrims. 'Sadhu's' - the holy men usually dressed in nothing more than an orange loin cloth with dreadlocked hair and beards are also here in great numbers. These are people with no fixed abode that have denounced all material possessions in favour of a life devoted to spirituality and religion - they seem to spend most of their sitting around smoking dope and asking passersby for 'donations' to their cause as far as we could tell though - not entirely dissimilar to your average university student, sitting around in their pants smoking dope all day getting hand outs from anyone they can...or are we missing the point...

Varanasi is a completely full on place, absolutely mental in every way and is like a melting pot of all the craziness of India in one place. When people talk of India being an assault on all of your senses it is never more prevalent than here. So after 4 days of mayhem here, and almost 2.5 months in the country we decided it was time to head out of India for a while, taking the train north headed for Nepal's capital city of Kathmandu.

India - Shimla and Chandigarh.. or is that Hereford & Milton Keynes

On the way to Chandigarh, we broke the journey up with a stop in the old English hill station town of Shimla, set on top of a mountain a few hours down the valley. Shimla started out life as a summer retreat for the English during the British rule of India, to escape the searing heat of the low lands though quickly became pretty much a year round base for the ruling Brits due to its far more agreeable climate. As such, the majority of the buildings, the general town layout and the overriding look and feel of the place is British. You could almost be wandering through some hillside town in Herefordshire or somewhere.

We only stopped a couple of nights here and had hoped to take the narrow gauge mountain railway from here down to the capital city of the Punjab state - Chandigarh, though our luck was out again and all tickets for the train were booked out. So we jumped on the bus again instead and 10 hours later arrived in Chandigarh.

Chandigarh is another strange place. It is set out like Milton Keynes with touches of Basildon in places. All grid system roads separated up into ‘Sectors’ with typically British style ’60-70s architecture and pedestrianised shopping squares. Apparently it was the first ‘modern’ city to be put in place post Indian independence and was supposed to be a vision of the future for India, with structure & order replacing the haphazard chaotic cities that defined the rest of the country. 60 years post independence though and the majority of Indian cities are still chaotic haphazard places from what we have seen – though all the better and more full of character for it as well.

There were only two redeeming features of Chandigarh as far as we could tell – a fantastic restaurant called ‘The Copper Chimney’ which served some of the best Tandoori chicken & Tandoori cauliflower (weird – but strangely good!) we had in India, and the second being a strange place called ‘Nek Chand’s Rock Garden’.

Nek Chand was sent to Chandigarh from Pakistan post independence to act as a road inspector. When he was initially struck by how much waste was being generated as all the old traditional villages were cleared to make way for the new modern Chandigarh, he started collecting up the waste, taking it back to his home just outside the city & recycling it all into sculptures and art. It was 15 years and many tons of recycled waste later when the government discovered what he had been doing, all of it on unauthorised state owned land. Thankfully though instead of destroying it they encouraged Ned to continue with it, now acting as India’s largest recycling scheme & the countries second most popular tourist attraction after the Taj Mahal.

It is a strange & surrealist place which is still being added to today and feels somewhere between a living Salvador Dali painting and a fantasy film set. He not only used the rubbish from the city, but also all the disused local rock & stone that once was the walls etc of the old villages. It would’ve been even better if it hadn’t be 45 degrees as we were strolling around it – oh for the temperatures of the mountains again, cold is so much more bearable than heat!

It was from Chandigarh that after 14 months & countless good times we said our farewells to Leanne, as she headed off to catch her flight to Mumbai then back to London. We on the other hand had another 6 hour bus trip to Delhi and an overnight train journey to arrive in our next destination, the holy city of Varanasi.

India - Spiti Valley & Manali

Manali is a popular tourist destination for both Indians & foreigners. The bustling modern section of Manali, or ‘New Manali’ is where all the Indian tourists head & the laid back traditionally styled ‘Old Manali’ a little higher up the valley is where the majority of the foreigners head. Both are in a beautiful setting in a Himalayan valley with the Beas River running through the valley floor.

Apart from being very popular in its own right due to its more agreeable climate and stunning mountain scenery, it is also the gateway town for the mountain road access north up to the Ladakh region and east to the Spiti Valley. Leanne & Sonia had spent a couple of weeks already in Manali waiting for the road up to Ladakh to open but it was still showing no signs of opening, so after a night or two in Manali we all decided to take a trip out to Spiti Valley instead which is similar Ladakh in that it is a high altitude Himalayan area with dramatic scenery and a large Tibetan influence.

We booked a private jeep taxi out to the Spiti Valley for the following day. Our driver was local to the Spiti area & had assured us that he was confident in the condition of the road (it also involving a couple of high mountain passes that only open at certain stages of the year) & reassured us about his slow & steady, calm and confident driving style, so early the following morning we started on our way for the 12 hour journey across the mountains to the main town of the Spiti Valley, Kaza.

The first high pass on the journey is about 3 hours out of Manali, snow covered & heaving with Indian tourists. This is the main reason many Indians come to Manali, as for many it is the first chance they have to see snow. On the road all the way up to the top of the pass there are hundreds of road side stalls offering a particularly dodgy selection of ‘70s & ‘80s ski suits for hire, alongside full length fur coats and little ankle high wellington boots, all for the princely sum of just under £1 for the day. At the top of the pass it makes for a pretty comical sight, there are hundreds of Indians walking around in this ridiculous looking ski wear or fur coats & ankle boots or paying people to drag them around on a little sledge – all making for a pretty amusing sight.

Once over this pass, we start down the other side of this mountain soon peeling off the main road onto yet another rough and not so ready track which would pretty much be the style of road for the remainder of the 12 hours. We had a perfect day for the journey, bright blue skies and sunshine meaning that the views throughout were stunning. Much of the way we were driving through areas that were so remote that the actual track we were following was so indecipherable amidst the surrounding rocks & ice that it seemed like the driver had taken a wrong turn & was now just blazing his own trail across these mountains. This feeling was reinforced when we came across a road block of snow that had not yet been cleared. Thankfully a bulldozer was already on the job, but it still meant a delay for about 1.5 hours while they cleared the 3m high wall of snow that was in the way.

A few more bumpy hours later & our driver was true to his word and safely delivered us in Kaza after a slow & steady drive through breathtaking scenery. With good sensible drivers being something of a rarity around these parts we decided to take his mobile number & use him as our driver for anything else we decided to do while here – including taking us back to Manali again in a week or so.

Kaza is a small town on the banks of a river at an altitude of around 3600m above sea level. Provisions are scarce due to limited access during winter months and the town suffers from power cuts for indefinite periods of time each day. At night it gets seriously cold here as well and so it was necessary to sleep in all our clothes.... so to recap, its below freezing, there are no heaters and when there is no electricity there is no hot water or lights. Thankfully, restaurants use small gas stoves to cook on (using candle light to see with) so we actually had hot food!

The plan was we would spent a night or two acclimatising to the altitude then head out on a trek for 3 or 4 days through the valley, stopping off at remote mountain villages each night & staying in one of the home-stay’s that were available (thinking that we could actually get some trekking done after failing to do any while we were in Ladakh). We had mapped out a bit of plan for visiting a few local monasteries the first couple of days, before heading out on the trek. However, on the first afternoon the glorious weather we had experienced the previous day took a serious turn for the worse, thick black clouds engulfing the valley & proceeded to dump a few feet of snow on the ground...

Undeterred we figured it would pass and called up our driver Sonam and arranged the weeks itinerary with him; first on the agenda a trip out to Kee Monastery & then up the mountain to the 4200m village of Kibber. Arriving punctually the following morning, Sonam assured us that the road was fine, there was only a bit of sleet in the air now & most of the snow had been cleared off the roads that we needed to use. Having hooked up with another couple also wanting to take the trip, the 6 of us headed up to Kee. Our new friends had spent the last 4 or 5 weeks in a Monastery further up the valley, taking part in a Buddhist training camp. The guy was Tibetan but born in India and the girl was an Italian/American. This basically meant was we had a knowledgeable guide with us who could ask our questions to the monks & translate back to us, without actually having to pay for the service.

Kee Monastery is the most populated in the area, with about 300 monks living there. Parts of the monastery date back 800 years and they even put on display the quarters the Dalai Lama slept in during his visit to Kee in 1960. During our visit there were a group of young kids from the local school tucking into lunch - all of them eager to pose for photos for us all in the Monastery kitchen while the monks prepared the food. After sharing a cup of tea with the monks, we moved on up the mountain to the town of Kibber, once laying claim to the title of the world’s highest village accessible via a motor-able road, now being displaced by a village in Tibet somewhere that holds the title.

Up at Kibber, set in another dramatic location it was a real shame that the cloud was still hanging in the valley & obscured most of the views that should’ve been spectacular. On our way back down the mountain this time with an additional 4 or 5 locals in the jeep who were looking for a ride down to Kaza, we wound our way back down the precarious mountain track. The snow had started again & the cloud really rolled in, Sonam was still taking the driving nice & steady, but as we rounded a blind corner we met another jeep that was coming up the mountain, and with the road only being wide enough for one we had a head on collision. Thankfully no one was hurt & we were only going at slow speed, it was also good that neither driver attempted to swerve out of the others way, otherwise one of the vehicles would’ve been off the side of the cliff. As it was all we had were two smashed up front ends & busted radiators.

Everyone jumped out of the vehicles, no one raising their voices or getting stressed about it in any way, that good old Buddhist fatalist mentality of ‘if something’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen, so there’s no point worrying about it’, actually seeming to make more sense in this situation than it had when we were in Ladakh hurtling around the mountains. Anyway, after mucking in with some running repairs, introducing India to the cracked egg in the radiator technique of blocking the leaks (albeit the damage was a little too great to really do the trick) we set off down the mountain again.

Not 2 minutes later we were pulling over with another problem, the throttle cable had coincidentally snapped as well! The running repair this time involved Sonam tearing a strip off a rag and tying it to the throttle lever in the engine bay so the throttle was permanently on...not really what you want on these roads but tentatively we set off down the mountain, willing Kaza to be closer than it actually was so we could get out of the jeep as soon as possible. On the outskirts of Kaza we pulled over at a tiny roadside tin shack completely on its own with an ‘Auto Repairs’ sign outside it... this was the ‘garage’ that would fix the jeep for our onward trip the following day. We left Sonam there and willingly walked the rest of the way back into town.

With the snow still falling the advice we were getting from the locals was that the trek would not be possible, so we decided to have a bit of change of plan and head back to Manali earlier, making a couple of detours to some more Monasteries en-route. The only problem this time was the road we had come in on was now completely closed again due to the bad weather on the high passes and the only alternative was to take the long way round which involved 2 full 12 hour days of driving and required us getting a permit to travel this way as the route goes very close to the Tibetan border. This meant a day of dealing with hopeless bureaucracy in Kaza to get the permits arranged.

Thankfully the weather had cleared the day we set off, which not only meant the driving conditions were much safer, but also that we could take full advantage of the views from the 1200 year old Dhankar Monastery, perched high up on a rocky outcrop overlooking the valley below. Tabo on the other hand is set in a valley floor, a less dramatic setting than Dhankar, though dates back to 996AD and has some of the finest preserved examples of ancient Indo-Tibetan art in the world.

Continuing on through more rugged remote & stunning scenery for several hours, along what the Lonely Planet describes as ‘India’s most sublime & scary mountain road’ (and it was in places), we reached our half way point & stop off for the night, the town of Rekong Peo. After another early start the following day though thankfully the weather was glorious again (typical), and we descended into lush green pine forests, a significant change from the from the dry desert like terrain of the previous day.


Safely back in Manali we enjoyed a very chilled out few days, which mainly revolved around just taking it easy and watching quite a few of the World Cup games. After a couple of days Sonia moved on towards Nepal where she was meeting up with Charlotte again, we stayed in Manali for another couple of days before we made our way south to Chandigarh where Leanne would start her journey home to the UK and where we would start or journey east to Varanasi.

India - Dharamsala, home of the Dalai Lama

We didn't waste any time in Jammu & took the first available bus out of town into the neighbouring state of Himachal Pradesh, climbing up once again into the foothills of the Himalaya and heading for the town of Dharamsala.

Dharamsala, and in particularly the small village of Mcleod Ganj only a couple of km's further up the valley, is where His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet now lives in exile, after escaping the Chinese threat in 1959. The Tibetan government in exile, of which His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama is both head and spiritual leader, operates out of the area. It is now pretty much the number one place that Tibetan refugees head to after escaping Tibet, being guaranteed a personal audience with their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama himself. When we were there, he had committments in the US and was unavailable however it is fairly common to see him apparently when he is home. The numbers of Tibetans still making this journey of exile are incredibly high, even though it involves a 6-8 week walk across dangerous high altitude mountain terrain. Many die en-route, and many are caught by the Chinese police, returned to Tibet for likely imprisonment and torture by the Chinese authorities. This doesn't discourage them trying though - it still being the preferable option to many than staying in Tibet under threat of torture or attack by the Chinese government as they systematically go about trying the wipe out as much as possible of the Tibetan culture. There are over 150,000 Tibetans living in exile and at least 100,00 of those in India after fleeing the country. Not that within China you will ever see anything other than positive news stories for what they are doing for Tibet - such is the communist propaganda that pervades the media there.

The sad fact also seems to be the rest of the world are apparently now turning a blind eye to the Free Tibet movement and the infringement of human rights that is ongoing, major world leaders now apparently not wanting to upset the new economic superpower as the western world is probably now more economically dependant on them than they are us. Not to mention also the fact the Chinese government are a pretty volatile, paranoid and unpredictable lot, with enough military might to cause the world more problems than we are apparently willing to deal with for the sake of a few million Tibetans...

Dharamsala is not only full of Tibetans but also completely overrun with tourists, either here to see firsthand what is going on with the Tibetan cause and maybe catch a glimpse of the Dalai Lama, or to get stuck into one of the many residential yoga or meditation courses on offer. It really is quite unbelievably commercial, there are more cappuccino bars, pizza restaurants and travel agents in Mcleod Ganj than there are probably anywhere else in India in such close proximity. The place that started out as a refuge to Tibetans in search of a better life is unfortunately starting to feel a little like a Tibetan theme park, and whilst tourism adds significantly to the local economy and enables exiled Tibetans to set up some small business', there is definitely a feeling that you get from some of the refugees that they would rather just get on with it without the constant audience.

That said it is in a beautiful mountain setting and the vast majority of the Tibetans we came into contact with were very warm people, appreciative of any assistance people offered, whether it be taking the time out to practise conversational English with them or offering basic advice about how they could make more of their small businesses.

The Dalai Lama's residence, monastery and temple came as a bit of a shock to us after visiting many of the traditional Tibetan monasteries in Ladakh that all have a very special ambience about them, the place here felt pretty soulless. It is a large concrete block done in the style of 1960-70's English architecture. The place is naturally filled with monks (& tourists) going about their daily prayers and debating sessions which can be quite heated debates involving shouting and load clapping, reverberating around the concrete building which unfortunately lends it the feeling of a drop in centre.

We only stayed a couple of days, the endless noise of traffic horns during the day driving us mad, and made our way on another 10 hour bus journey through the mountains up to the town of Manali to meet up with Leanne & Sonia.